Last Friday, the video game industry changed forever with the reveal that Phil Spencer would be retiring as the chief executive officer of Microsoft’s gaming division, leaving the company he had spent 38 years with, while spending the last decade at the forefront of the Xbox brand. His replacement started yesterday. Asha Sharma, formerly the CEO of Microsoft’s CoreAI division, was placed at the head of Xbox after joining Microsoft in 2024.
Sharma’s opening message to players has been all about how she wants to bring about “the return of Xbox,” and in a new interview with Windows Central, she reaffirms that commitment and tries to explain more of what she means. She also drops another hint towards when we’ll hear about new Xbox hardware, though it’s nothing more than saying we’ll learn more about the company’s hardware plans “soon.”
“For me, the spirit of ‘Return to Xbox’ is about returning to the spirit that the team was founded on. It’s that spirit of surprise, it’s the spirit of building something nobody else was willing to try – I’ve heard ‘renegade,’ ‘rebellion,’ and ‘fun,’ used. That’s what I was thinking about when I wrote that,” Sharma explains.
Sharma continued by explaining she understands that people have “thousands of dollars” and “25 years of themselves” into the Xbox platform. She adds, “I want to make sure everybody knows I’m committed to Xbox, starting with the console,” before also saying that as the world continues to evolve, Xbox will “keep meeting players where they are” and “invest in reducing the artificial divide between different types of devices.” She also says she believes Xbox “starts with its fans.”
She also provides some insight into the question of whether we’ll start seeing Xbox have more exclusive titles, and it seems like, at least for the short term, nothing about Xbox’s plan to put its games on all platforms, even if they are timed console exclusives on Xbox, will change.
“I am committed to ‘returning to Xbox,’ and that starts with the console, that starts with hardware. You will hear more about that soon, we’ll have some announcements coming up. You will see us collectively investing here. We also know that there are a lot of players who aren’t on console or our hardware, and I want to deliver great games to them too. I need to learn more about what that can look like, what decisions were made, what we need to do going forward, and I want a little bit of time and space to do that.”
Matt Booty, as the new chief content officer, chimed in to say that the studio’s system is “fully built around being first-party. We’re not built to just be a publisher,” which feels like a pointed statement, considering how it has seemed like Xbox would lean into just being a publisher with its consistent decline in hardware revenue recently and a heavier focus on its software and services. “We’re committed to being a first-party games publisher in partnership with our first-party platform team,” Booty adds.
On the point of Xbox’s struggles, Sharma concludes her comments by saying she will use her experience and the leaders around her to grow the business and “make sure that we have an incredible next 25 years.”
“I will listen, I will learn, I will communicate what we’re seeing, and what we’re doing. I think from here, the work is proof over promise. Matt and I are in it, every hour of every day of every night, I am fully in this thing. This team has brought it back before, and I’m here to help us do it again.”
Ultimately, Sharma’s words are nothing more than that right now. They are words from someone who has everything to prove. Her statement that “the work is proof over promise” going forward is probably the most genuine comment she makes in the whole interview, because that’s exactly right. These are just promises yet to be fulfilled right now. We’ll see where things stand once Sharma has spent some serious time in the role.
Xbox’s New CEO Promises “Return to Xbox” and New Hardware Info “Soon”
